Written by John Milius (of Red Dawn fame), the story speculates on a global economic crisis that arises because oil supplies run out. This forces the US to withdraw military support from Asia, leaving the door open for North Korea to take over South Korea, creating a unified country, which later enables it to annex other nations like Japan. By the year 2027, the Korean Republic grows to encompass much of East Asia (we have no idea what China was doing in all that time), and it eventually sets its sights on taking the United States. Korea cripples the US with an EMP strike and successfully invades the western half of the country. Disenfranchised and living under the oppressive occupation, the player is rescued from an internment camp bus and drafted into a small group of rebels located in Montrose, Colorado.

Told in seven acts, Homefront is a ridiculously short game. It took us roughly five hours to complete the campaign. In that time, the game only manages to tell a shallow narrative that involves wartime atrocities like internment/labor camps and genocide. The game rushes players from one location to another and culminates into a final battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, where a completely predictable ending awaits. However, players are usually only given a vague idea of what's happening and why. For example, there's only a brief mention of why the Koreans consider Montrose a strategic asset. To us, it seemed like any other suburban area - certainly not important enough to build an impenetrable wall around. Similarly, there are off-handed mentions of how the Asian American community was treated after the invasion.

Homefront does a good job depicting a destroyed suburbia, where people who aren't in the resistance or working in a labor camp try to survive under the heel of oppression. Resources are scarce, and there's hardly enough electricity to bring in basic needs like clean water. Schools are deserted and the football stadium is converted into a large internment camp. Despite all this, we had a tough time understanding why Korean soldiers feel the need to execute people in the streets or fire bomb an entire camp in response to the rebel movement, other than the fact that they're supposed to be the bad guys and therefore must commit as many horrific acts possible to maintain their evil status. The plot has all the subtlety of a sledge hammer.

The game is also so firmly affixed to scripted rails that it borders on absurdity. The first seven minutes of Act III can literally be played without firing a single shot, turning it into one extremely long interactive cut scene. In another scene, we failed the mission because we killed a target right after a character said, "fire as soon as you have a clear shot" instead of waiting for him to explain how the scope works. Players kick open a total of one door throughout the entire campaign. In all other cases, main character suffers from the complete inability to open doors and has to wait for all other characters to go first before entering a room or climbing up a ladder. This becomes extremely tedious because most of the game involves following people as they move from one location to the next, and the game automatically kills you if you stray more than a couple feet from the beaten path. It doesn't help that the characters you spend time with are two-dimensional to the point of being annoying. Connor is so anti-occupation, that he'll jump into any situation without looking. The girl (Rhianna) becomes upset when forced to shoot through a camp of crazy survivalists because she "didn't sign up" to shoot Americans, even though they have no qualms about killing her or worse.

These companions are not only annoying, but they're unreliable too. Oftentimes, they'll shout "All clear," encouraging you to move up only to have some straggler that was hiding amidst the rubble shoot you from behind. In one case, a character shouts, "Go hit the switch, I got your back" shortly before an enemy soldier wandered into the room and shot us. In other instances, characters would come up behind us and block our ability to return to cover. This isn't exactly the kind of thing that instills a lot of trust among partners. We can't help thinking that creating a co-op campaign would have gone a long ways toward making this game better. Enemy soldiers stream in like there's a never ending supply of them and shoot with pinpoint precision, to the point where they can headshot you with an RPG from 200 yards away while you're hidden in a corner. In some cases, obvious headshots fail to kill enemies, while it only takes two or three hits from them to die. There's also quite a bit of inconsistency between breakable materials. An automated cannon can rip through a concrete barrier, everything else (including wooden fences) is indestructible.

The game maintains a sense of tension by providing a limited supply of ammunition. Bullets have to be picked up off bodies, which sometimes means a lot of weapon switching. However, the weapons don't stay on the field if you have to reload to a checkpoint. So, if pick up a clip for an empty weapon right after the autosave kicks in, then die, you'll be stuck with no bullets when loading back in. Homefront has some memorable moments, like a scene ballistic white phosphorous bomb that rains down fury on a parking lot full of enemy soldiers before inadvertently becoming a friendly fire incident. Why a direct hit from the bomb didn't light the main character and his partner on fire too defies understanding. We also enjoyed directing the Goliath robotic gun vehicle around and liked playing sniper from the bell tower, right up until it turned into a chaotic dash for a chopper.

Homefront plays much better as a multiplayer experience, since there's more freedom to move around, but even that is hampered by some severe balance issues. In our time playing the sniper rifles were extremely unbalanced, to the point where players could camp out on sign clear across the map and pick off targets with single body shots. The killcam isn't very helpful in letting you know how you died or how to avoid it. It soon reached a point where we didn't see any more sense in playing.

With all things considered, Homefront's gameplay seems like it's designed more for the 1990s era than a game that's releasing in 2011. It's a linear shooter with a paper thin plot and characters, that entirely uses checkpoints instead of manual saves. It reaches for some sense of gritty realism, then does everything it can to ensure it never happens. It's not the worst experience we've ever had, but certainly not one we're likely to remember or return to anytime soon.